Autodesk Inc (ADSK) — Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Thanks, operator. And good afternoon. Thanks for joining our conference call to discuss the fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2024 results. On the line with me are Andrew Anagnost, our CEO; and Debbie Clifford, our CFO. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements including outlook and related assumptions, products and strategy. Actual events or results could differ materially. Please refer to our SEC filings, including our most recent Form 10-Q and the Form 8-K filed with today's press release for important risks and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ from those in our forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements made during the call are being made as of today. If this call is replayed or reviewed after today, the information presented during the call may not contain current or accurate information. Autodesk disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. We will quote several numeric or growth changes during this call as we discuss our financial performance. Unless otherwise noted, each such reference represents a year-on-year comparison. All non-GAAP numbers referenced in today's call are reconciled in our press release or Excel financials and other supplemental materials available on our Investor Relations website. And now, I will turn the call over to Andrew.

Thank you, Simon. And welcome, everyone, to the call. We finished the year strongly, delivering 40% constant currency revenue growth in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024. Resilience, discipline and opportunity again underpinned our robust financial and competitive performance. Autodesk's resiliency comes from its subscription business model and its product and customer diversification, which balances growth across different regions and industries. Renewal rates remained strong. And new business growth and leading indicators were consistent with recent quarters. Despite ongoing macroeconomic policy and geopolitical headwinds, we saw growing usage, record activity on BuildingConnected and cautious optimism from channel partners. Disciplined and focused execution and strategic capital deployment through the economic cycle enables Autodesk to realize the significant benefits of its strategy while mitigating the risks of having to make expensive catch-up investments later on. With the new transaction model, we are approaching the final phase of modernizing our go-to-market motion, which has involved updating our infrastructure, retiring old systems, ending business models, and building more durable and direct relationships with our customers and ecosystem. At the same time, we are advancing a multi-year process to develop lifecycle solutions within and between our industry clouds, powered by shared platform services and with Autodesk's data model at its core. Together, these will enable Autodesk, its customers, and partners to create more valuable, data-driven and connected products and services. Having led the industry in generative design, we are leading again in 3D generative AI. Autodesk is getting closer to a transformational leap where Autodesk AI is to design and make what ChatGPT is to language. Our new multimodal foundation models will enable design and make customers to automate low-value and repetitive tasks and generate more high-value complex designs more rapidly and with much greater consistency. We can already generate 3D representations from images 10 times faster and with higher quality currently available through AI. We're bolstering our homegrown capabilities and data with partnerships and acquisitions in existing and adjacent verticals. Our recent integration of Fusion with Cadence and the acquisition of Payapps are good examples. Discipline and focus on executing our strategy and deploying capital also underpin our opportunity. Our go-to-market and platform initiatives will drive even greater operational velocity and efficiency within Autodesk, which will free up further resources to invest in our industry clouds and capabilities, including AI and sustained margin improvement. And with a modernized go-to-market motion, lifecycle solutions, and platform services, Autodesk will fulfill its potential to break down the silos within and between manufacturing, AEC, and media entertainment, enabling our customers to unleash their data and design a better world built for all. I will now turn the call over to Debbie to take you through our quarterly financial performance and guidance for fiscal 2025. I'll then come back to update you on our strategic growth initiatives.

Thanks, Andrew. Our financial performance in the fourth quarter and for the fiscal year was strong, particularly in our enterprise business. Early renewals and strong upfront revenue from enterprise business agreements or EBAs and federal governments drove some of the outperformance relative to our expectations in both Q4 billings and revenue. Overall, market conditions and the underlying momentum of the business were consistent with the last few quarters. Total revenue grew 11% and 14% in constant currency, with upfront revenue driving 2 percentage points of that growth. By products in constant currency, AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT revenue grew 7%, AEC revenue grew 18%, manufacturing revenue grew 16%, and media and entertainment revenue was up 8%. AEC and manufacturing benefited from EBA true-up and upfront revenue. By region in constant currency, revenue grew 19% in the Americas, 11% in EMEA, and 8% in APAC. Direct revenue increased 19% and represented 39% of total revenue, up 3 percentage points from last year, benefiting from strong growth in both EBAs and Autodesk's store. Net revenue retention rate remained within the 100% to 110% range at constant exchange rates. Billings declined 19% in the quarter, resulting from the transition from upfront to annual billings for multiyear contracts as expected, slightly offset by some early renewals in North America. As part of our implementation sequencing for the new transaction model, we shifted our North American price increase from the end of March to the beginning of February. This resulted in some renewals moving from Q1 fiscal 2025 to Q4 fiscal 2024, which modestly boosted billings in January. Total deferred revenue decreased 7% to $4.3 billion and is expected as a result of the transition from upfront to annual billings for multiyear contracts. Total RPO of $6.1 billion and current RPO of $4 billion grew 9% and 13% respectively. Early renewals drove about 1 percentage point of current RPO growth. Total RPO growth decelerated in Q4 when compared to Q3 when we closed our largest-ever EBA. The year-over-year deceleration was due to the lower mix of multiyear contracts in fiscal 2024 when compared to fiscal 2023. In line with recent quarters and our expectations, we again saw some evidence of multiyear customers switching to annual contracts during the quarter. Turning to the P&L, GAAP and non-GAAP gross margin were broadly level, while operating margin was modestly lower in the fourth quarter, primarily due to the timing of Autodesk University costs shifting from Q3 to Q4, which we flagged last quarter. As expected, full-year non-GAAP operating margin was level year-over-year but up about one percentage point at constant exchange rates. Fourth-quarter GAAP operating margin was up 40 basis points year-over-year and about one percentage point at constant exchange rates, partly due to a reduction in stock-based compensation as a percent of revenue. At current course and speed, the ratio of stock-based compensation as a percent of revenue peaks in fiscal 2024. We expect it to fall to 10% or lower over time. Free cash flow for the quarter and full year was $427 million and $1.28 billion respectively with early renewals providing a modest tailwind in the fourth quarter. The most significant free cash flow headwinds from our transition from upfront to annual billings for multiyear contracts are now behind us, which means our free cash flow will naturally rebuild over the next few years. Turning to capital allocation, we continue to actively manage capital within our framework and deploy it with discipline and focus through the economic cycle to drive long-term shareholder value. As you heard from Andrew, we continue to invest organically and through complementary acquisitions to enhance our capabilities and the industry clouds and platform that underpin them. During the quarter, we purchased approximately 300,000 shares for $63 million at an average price of approximately $217 per share. We have now offset estimated dilution from our stock-based compensation program well into fiscal 2026. We will continue to repurchase shares opportunistically to offset dilution from stock-based compensation when it makes sense to do so. Now let me finish with guidance. Overall, end-market demand has remained pretty consistent over the last few quarters. Macroeconomic and one-off factors dragged on the new business growth rate during fiscal 2024 and will modestly drag on revenue growth in fiscal 2025, but Autodesk's resilience and robust underlying demand for its products and services reinforce its long-term growth potential. Turning to revenue, I want to highlight four key factors impacting growth in fiscal 2025. First, let me talk about the new transaction model. We've added some slides to the earnings deck to help illustrate how to think about this shift, which I'll briefly summarize. The new transaction model enables Autodesk to build closer, more direct relationships with its customers and partners and to better understand and serve them with more data, self-service, and greater predictability. It will be a cornerstone of the data services that Andrew talked about earlier. The transition mechanically drives higher revenue and costs, broadly neutral to operating profit and free cash flow dollars, and is a headwind to operating margin percent. About $600 million of payments made to resellers in developed markets in fiscal 2024 were accounted for as contra-revenue. As this business moves to the new transaction model, these payments will shift to marketing and sales expense over the next few years. The pace of the shift will primarily be determined by the mechanical build from ratable subscription revenue accounting and the rate of regional rollout of the new transaction model. While the former is relatively easy to predict due to the ratable revenue recognition of our subscription business model, the latter will partly depend on what we learn as we roll out the model further. We gained useful insights from the successful rollout in Australia, and we're expecting to learn more as we roll out with much higher volumes in North America this year. Our fiscal 2025 guidance assumes the new transaction model is deployed in North America in Q2 of fiscal 2025 and provides about a one percentage point tailwind to Autodesk's revenue growth and a three to four point tailwind to billings growth. Second, the acquisition of Payapps, which closed on February 20th, is expected to contribute about 0.5 points of revenue growth in fiscal 2025. Third, token consumption for the fiscal 2021 EBA cohort exceeded consumption predictions made during the pandemic, which resulted in true-up payments in fiscal 2024. Token consumption and the smaller post-pandemic fiscal 2022 EBA cohort is tracking more in line with predictions, which means we expect fewer true-up payments in fiscal 2025. This pandemic echo effect is about a point of headwind to fiscal 2025 revenue growth. Fourth, our rolling four-quarter foreign-exchange hedges mean that FX is expected to be about a one percentage point headwind to reported revenue growth in fiscal 2025. Bringing this all together, we expect revenue of between $5.99 billion and $6.09 billion in fiscal 2025, which translates into a revenue growth of about 9% to 11% compared to fiscal 2024. Adjusting the midpoint of our guidance to exclude noise from the new transaction model, acquisitions, the absence of EBA true-up revenue, and FX, we expect underlying revenue to grow more than 10% in fiscal 2025. Moving on to margins. We're going to manage our non-GAAP operating margins between a range of 35% and 36% in fiscal 2025, with the goal of keeping them roughly level with fiscal 2024. This means we expect a roughly one-point underlying margin improvement will be broadly offset by margin headwinds from the new transaction model. As we transition to the new transaction model, we'll see operating margin headwinds from the accounting change of moving reseller costs from contra-revenue to sales and marketing expense. We'll also have incremental investment in people, processes, and automation. But over the long-term, we expect that this transition to the new transaction model will enable us to further optimize our business, which we anticipate will provide a tailwind to revenue, operating income, and free cash flow dollars, even after the incremental costs we expect to incur. Moving on to free cash flow, we expect to generate between $1.43 billion and $1.5 billion of free cash flow in fiscal 2025. In Australia, some channel partners accelerated renewals ahead of the transition to the new transaction model to de-risk month one of the transition. Because the new transaction model will be rolled out in Q2 in North America, it may be that the behavior we saw in Australia occurs also in North America, which may accelerate billings and free cash flow to earlier quarters, but should not materially change the outlook for the year. Excluding $200 million from fiscal 2024 free cash flow from multiyear upfront billings, which are now billed annually, in fiscal 2025, we expect free cash flow growth of about 35% at the midpoint of our guidance. We expect faster free cash flow growth in fiscal 2026 because of the return of our largest multi-year renewal cohort, the mechanical stacking of multiyear contracts billed annually, and a larger EBA cohort. As we navigate the new transaction model transition, the pace of the rollout will create noise in the P&L. So we think free cash flow is the best measure of our performance. At current course and speed, our free cash flow estimate for fiscal 2026 at the midpoint is approximately $2.05 billion, which is in line with consensus estimates. In the context of significant macroeconomic, geopolitical, policy, health, and climate uncertainty, the mechanical rebuilding of our free cash flow as we transition to annual billings for multiyear contracts gives Autodesk an enviable source of visibility and certainty. We continue to manage our business using a Rule-of-40 framework with a goal of reaching 45% or more over time. We are taking significant steps toward our goal this year and next. We think this balance between compounding growth and strong free cash flow margins, captured in the Rule-of-40 framework is the hallmark of the most valuable companies in the world, and we intend to remain one of them. The slide deck on our website has more details on modeling assumptions for Q1 and full-year fiscal 2025. Andrew, back to you.

Thank you, Debbie. Let me finish by updating you on our strong progress in the fourth quarter. We continue to see good momentum in AEC, particularly in infrastructure and construction fueled by customers consolidating onto our solutions to connect and optimize previously siloed workflows through the cloud. The cornerstone of that growing interest is our comprehensive end-to-end solutions, encompassing design, preconstruction, field execution through handover, and into operations. This breadth of connected capability enables us to extend our footprint further into infrastructure and construction and also expand our reach into the mid-market. As a sign of that growing momentum, we closed a record number of deals over $100,000 and $1 million in construction accounts in the United States and worldwide during this quarter. Let me give you a few examples. First, Vinci, a world leader in concessions, energy, and construction has been leveraging Autodesk solutions to streamline its operations and drive international expansion. With a platform approach, Revit customization, and BIM as a standard practice, Vinci has achieved significant time savings annually and captured more business abroad. In Q4, Vinci renewed its fourth enterprise business agreement with Autodesk, expanding the deployment of Autodesk Construction Cloud on major projects to further integrate its data and workflows, and ensure a seamless transition from design through construction. Second, after a competitive RFP process early in the year, Fortis Construction, an ENR 400 firm based in Oregon ran a thorough peer assessment and selected Autodesk Construction Cloud for a six-month pilot. With the confidence gained during the pilot and close alignment between the construction technology vision and Autodesk roadmap to a connected design-build-operate platform, Fortis committed in Q4 to a multi-year agreement across preconstruction and construction. And third, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation recently chose Autodesk Construction Cloud as the primary tool powering its project delivery collaboration center, which will manage the project delivery of infrastructure projects in the state, largely due to our software-inclusive open ecosystem. Again, these stories have a common theme, managing people, processes, and data across the project lifecycle to increase efficiency and sustainability while decreasing risk. Over time, we expect the majority of all projects to be managed this way, and we remain focused on enabling that transition through our industry clouds. With the acquisition of Payapps, Autodesk will embed payment and compliance management into the project lifecycle. It can take an average of 83 days for subcontractors to get paid after putting work in place. And because of the risk, many will not bid on a project if a general contractor or an owner has a reputation for slow payments. Our goal is to leverage technology that eases the burden of construction payment management into a simpler, faster, and more efficient process for all construction project stakeholders. Moving on to manufacturing. We made excellent progress on our strategic initiatives. Customers continue to invest in their digital transformations and consolidate our design and make platform to grow their business and make it more resilient. In automotive, we continue to grow our footprint beyond the design studio into manufacturing and connected factories as automotive OEMs connect data and shorten hand-off to the design cycle. In the US, a leading manufacturer leveraged AEC solutions Fusion and Autodesk platform services to develop a connected factory, delivering a much greater ROI to significantly faster design durations, product prototyping, and data federation. Due to expanded EBA signed in Q4, it is exploring using VR studio tools in customization and increasing its adoption of Autodesk Construction Cloud to bring its new factories to life. We continue to serve some of the largest manufacturers in the world with a full breadth of our portfolio, as they design and make both products and factories. One of the largest private manufacturers in the US leverages our advanced manufacturing portfolio including Fusion, PowerMill, and Moldflow, which has helped reduce rework in plastic design by 20%. To build clean-energy solutions, it utilizes our AEC collection, including BIM metadata, assembly breakout, and installation instructions for its building products. In Q4, the customer increased its EBA with Autodesk and plans to expand our partnership beyond Revit and Autodesk Construction Cloud to support the digitalization of its factories. Fusion remains one of the fastest-growing products in the manufacturing industry and ended the quarter with 255,000 subscribers, driven by the growing number of customers who recognize the value of cloud-based workflows, enhancing efficiency, sustainability, and resilience within their organization. As the breadth and depth of Fusion features and capabilities expand, we're beginning to drive adoption by larger companies and higher-value segments of the professional market through expansion. As we do this, commercial subscriptions will become less complete indicators of Fusion's performance relative to the value we can realize in our reporting or change to reflect that. In education, we are preparing future engineers to drive innovation through next-generation design, analysis, and manufacturing solutions. In the fall, the University of Delaware selected Fusion for more than 600 students to use in its introduction to engineering class, replacing a competitor's solution. Fusion was chosen because it facilitated better team collaboration, was easily adopted due to available teaching resources, and provided a single integrated platform to learn CAD, simulation, and CAM. And lastly, we continue to work with our customers to ensure they are using the latest and most secure versions of our software. In Q4, an American pharmaceutical company looked to better understand its usage and ensure compliance in the transition to our named user model. In collaboration with our license compliance team, a preventive audit was conducted to identify risk areas and construct a combination of subscriptions and Flex tokens for continued access. It is also taking the opportunity Flex enables us to trial new products from our portfolio, resulting in an annual spend increase of more than 30%. Autodesk remains relentlessly curious with a desire to evolve and innovate. Time and again, our success in executing strategic transformation and added new growth vectors built a more diverse and resilient business, forged broader, trusted and more durable partnerships with more customers, and given Autodesk a longer runway for growth and free cash flow generation. We are building the future with focus, purpose, and optimism. Operator, we would like to open the call up for questions.

Okay. Great. Hey Andrew, hey Debbie. Thanks for taking my questions here and nicely done.

Thanks, Sakit.

Thanks, Sakit.

Hey, guys. Andrew, maybe just to start with you, you talked a little bit more about generative AI on this call, which was great to hear. Maybe just to make sure the question is asked, can you just talk about what your sort of core engineering customers are saying about generative AI? And I'm sure it's a very long discussion, but how do you think about the value that Autodesk can provide sort of on that journey?

First, I want to emphasize that our goal is to lead the market in generative AI, similar to our previous leadership in generative design over a decade ago. We are committed to heavily investing in this area. Our AI lab, established in 2018, has been the foundation for much of the core research I mentioned earlier. We have been integrating AI into our products for several years, including the recent release of drawing automation in Fusion, which helps automate manufacturing drawing stacks, a traditionally labor-intensive task that significantly enhances productivity for our customers. Our customers are seeking productivity improvements. They want to understand what those improvements will look like and how we'll leverage their data to achieve them. We plan to approach this in two ways: one method will be disruptive to their existing workflows, while the other will focus on automating their current capabilities. Both strategies are necessary, each offering different value propositions and rates of adoption. Disruptive technologies, like our new tools for generating 3D models from photographs or incomplete models, provide an innovative starting point for our customers, allowing them to build models based on specifications and requirements. While we haven't released these yet, we anticipate launching a private beta soon. We are excited about this disruptive technology. Additionally, we will offer tools similar to Fusion's drawing automation that will simplify the process of creating 3D models and their outputs, reducing the timeframe from months to weeks or even days. This will greatly enhance the productivity of customers currently using our existing tools, even if they adopt more disruptive solutions at a slower pace. Both strategies are crucial and will receive our attention going forward.

Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Debbie, maybe for my follow up for you. Autodesk obviously provides a lot of value to its customers, which you're also able to capture as well. Maybe the question is, can you just talk a little about some of the recent pricing actions that have been out there? And what sort of customer behavior that might drive as a result? I think there was a little bit of difference in pricing, sort of between one year and multi-year subscriptions. How do you think about that impacting the model, if at all, going forward?

Sure. So let's start first with what we did. So there are a couple of things going on. We did about a three-point increase for market factors and then we did a 5% increase for renewals. With market factors, this was something that we've been talking about for a while. Our goal is to streamline pricing around the world. And then for the renewals price change before the increase, we had a 10-point price differential between new and renewal, and with this move to agency or the move to the new transaction model, we don't see as much of a need for that delta. In Q4 what we did was, we moved up the timing of the price increase so that we could better sequence things with the new transaction model coming and that led to some early renewals down the stretch. That's part of what gave an extra point of growth to current RPO. But the price increase overall was most helpful to billings, but it wasn't material to revenue and free cash flow.

Got it. Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

Great. And thanks much for taking the question. Maybe on the transactional model and thanks guys for all of the disclosures around it. Maybe talk a little bit more about the learnings you have from the early customer and partner feedback in Australia and even now that you have the early days of this direct relationship, anything interesting there that you're learning from your more direct relationship with customers, be it usage or adoption or expansion that you clearly didn't have before with the prior model? Thanks.

Yes. Thanks, Adam, for that question. First off, let me just reinforce something here because I want to make sure that we're all on the same page about why we're doing this, right? This is a critical part of a relentless, ongoing modernization of Autodesk's business, getting us ready for the long-term success we expect in a world of AI-driven, cloud-based solutions for design to make lifecycles. It's a necessary step in this. It's the last big one in our journey of all the ones we've done at this point, and it really has some big benefits for our customers long-term. One, it's going to allow us to understand them a lot better in ways that we can't currently understand them because we don't have the full account record of what the customer is doing. Two, it's going to allow us to deliver a lot more self-service capability to these customers. And three, it's going to turn our partner channel into design-made collaborators and consultants for our customers with their own unique IP and their own services, and away from transaction partners. So it's critical that we get on the same page on that. With regards to Australia, we actually did learn a lot, mainly about the transactions at this point because it was only for a quarter and a little bit. It didn't necessarily have direct impacts on customer behavior. But we did learn that we've now put into the process. In fact, we actually delayed our US rollout by 30 days based on some of the learnings during the Australian process. We also changed our roadmap for some of the capabilities, updated and upgraded some of the capabilities in the transaction systems to kind of correspond with some things we saw in Australia. We also delivered some new enablement materials for partners and customers as well, so they understand how this transaction model impacts their relationship with Autodesk. So we definitely took the learnings to heart to ensure that we were better prepared, and we even gave ourselves a little bit more time based on what we learned to finish up a few things that we think are going to be impactful.

That's great. And maybe just as a quick follow up, you talked about some success with state DoT. As you think about the infrastructure bill and the stimulus that continues to be deployed, maybe just give a quick update on Innovyze and just a quick State of the Union there and the opportunity as part of the broader infrastructure push. Thanks so much.

You'll probably hear us use the name Innovyze less and talk more about Autodesk Construction or water solutions moving forward. Water has been a significant part of our EBA successes, and there's a clear reason for that. Water is just as crucial now, if not more so. Recently in California, we experienced another unexpected flood in San Diego, primarily due to water management infrastructure directing water improperly. There is a pressing need to construct and rebuild water infrastructure of all kinds, addressing issues like water scarcity and purity. Water is set to become a major business in the future and continues to enhance some of our EBAs in this regard. Regarding infrastructure, I want to highlight something mentioned earlier about PennDOT. It's a key example of what's happening there. Why is PennDOT choosing our solutions? It's largely due to the infrastructure bill and the funds allocated within it to assist Departments of Transportation in future investments. PennDOT reviewed its tools, considered its needs for the next 10 to 20 years, looked at modern solutions, and opted to adopt more of our offerings. This marks a significant step in our mission. We aim to aid in modernizing Departments of Transportation with the cutting-edge tools we've developed for comprehensive design solutions. This is another essential aspect to watch as the infrastructure boom continues to expand across the United States.

Great. Thanks for all the details.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Andrew, first question concerns the transaction model and what I'd like to ask about is relating the operational, transactional and accounting systems and compensation systems that you've put in place relative to the scale of your volume. You added well over 700,000 subscriptions in fiscal 2024, more than you added in fiscal 2023. You've spoken of certain growth expectations for volume over time. So, maybe help us understand the capacity that you have in place now to support the long-term volume growth expectations that you have, because undoubtedly you're looking to do substantially more subscription additions than you did in fiscal 2024.

Yes. So Jay, obviously the modernization of Autodesk and its back-office infrastructures isn't just about rolling out the new transaction model and the nuts and bolts of that. It's actually about increasing our internal capacity to do these things at scale, which is exactly what we were trying to test in Australia in the various environments, and that we've been testing since then. So, we are very confident that we've not only built a transaction environment, but a cascading set of capabilities that allow us to scale significantly as we move forward. Because you're right, we intend to get deeper and deeper into people's design and make processes, and that's going to increase the amount of subscriptions that are being used downstream in other types of make processes, and we have to be able to operate at scale. So this is not just a new transactional model modernization effort. It's a full-scale modernization effort inside of Autodesk that captures all aspects of this. The good thing about the cascading rollout, the way we're doing it this year with the US first, is again we're going to get yet another test on the volume and capacity of the systems that allows us to understand where we're at before we go live with the next level of rollout and volume capture. But just know that this is more than just a transaction model. It is a full-scale modernization of what's going on under the hood at Autodesk.

Yes. I understand. My second question is about products and technology. Reflecting on the various product and roadmap sessions you mentioned at AU a few months ago, what are the key product deliverables that you are focusing on this year, especially in terms of enhancing or expanding existing products like Revit or introducing new tools?

Yes, so I'll just hit a few here, okay? First off, in manufacturing, the critical thing that really needs to happen this year for Fusion, for example, is we have to improve our capability to help move Fusion from small teams in the design and make part of the business all the way up to supporting full-scale engineering teams. So basically scaling the size of installations inside of our customer base with Fusion. That's going to be through a combination of things we do with our cloud-based data management solutions as well as some of our AI-based solutions which basically attract people to the product because of the productivity enhancement. But that is definitely an important effort. There's a second ancillary effort with regards to Fusion around ensuring that our partnerships with companies like Cadence and the internal EDA capabilities we've built in the Fusion set us up for a boom in smart products. We want to be the solution that people choose for smart products. We built enough capability into Fusion that people can get a certain way end-to-end with Fusion and we're partnering to make sure that when things get more sophisticated, we're able to move up into the more sophisticated processes associated with these smart products. Now, when it comes to Forma, Forma and Fusion kind of dance together here, and one of the things that it's really important to do as we move into this year is make sure that Forma and Revit play together as our customers try to move forward as they adopt Fusion and also as they use Revit more collaboratively in the cloud, that these two products work together in some way, that they exchange data and interoperate in ways that nobody else can achieve. Because the truth of the matter is, the work that people are doing with Revit isn't going away. It's a huge amount of what they do, and we need to make sure that that work is more efficient in a formal world. So, look for us to not only increase the capabilities of Forma, but increase its relationship with Revit as well, which I think is really important. The last thing I'll say, just around media and entertainment is, we have to continue to take what we're doing regarding moving beyond post-production special effects into full production management, script-to-screen capabilities for our customers in the filmmaking industry and make some of that real with the flow platform and that's really the big goal for the media entertainment team, is to make flow real this year and help our customers really see possibilities of integrating new types of complex solutions on top of a single production management environment.

Very good. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Debbie.

You're very welcome.

Hi everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask about Autodesk's long-term growth rates, which have been framed in the 10% to 15% range. The guidance for 2025 is maintaining at 10%. When considering the 10% growth rate, do you think, as expected, that it reflects the nature of your businesses being influenced by end markets that might be nearing their lowest point in the cycle? If that is the case and we are at this lowest point, what indicators are you monitoring in the upcoming quarters that could signal the beginning of a recovery, as your markets usually do after reaching such a low point?

Thanks. So, we continue to target that 10% to 15% revenue growth algorithm and you're right, the midpoint for fiscal 2025 was right at that 10% coming off a year where we did 13% growth in constant currency. And really what we've said is that where we end up in that 10% to 15% range is going to be contingent upon the macroeconomic backdrop that we operate in, as well as our ability to harvest the opportunities that we have before us across AEC, manufacturing, and so on. The things that we're watching as we proceed through this year with that 10% midpoint are some of the things we've been talking about for a while now. So, new business growth is a really important indicator of future revenue performance for the company and we said in this last quarter that new business growth grew, but it was relatively soft, consistent with what we had seen over the previous several quarters. So, definitely being impacted by macro and that's one of the factors that's driving the 10% revenue growth midpoint in fiscal 2025, so we'll continue to watch that closely. We also watch product usage, we watch bidding activity on our BuildingConnected platform, and we stay close to our channel partners, trying to understand what they're seeing in terms of their demand. So those are the things that we're going to be watching to see how this year progresses and beyond.

Okay thanks. That's helpful. And then I wanted to follow-up on the free cash flow. I think I heard $2.05 billion for fiscal 2026. At one point there was a comment that the progression between FY 2024 and 2026, that was going to be linear, of course, if you normalize for that $200 million effect benefit last year and then comes out this year. I guess as I look at that and the $2.05 billion, it's not quite linear. It would seem like FY 2026 is actually maybe a bit stronger. Did something change in kind of the modeling out of the progression? Just any color there?

Nothing's changed Joe. So we said that we anticipate that cash flow would grow greater in fiscal 2026 than what we saw in fiscal 2025. When you think about modeling the growth rate, just remember that you have to remove the $200 million in fiscal 2024 before we stopped selling multi-year contracts upfront.

Okay, I'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe first for Andrew, just on the acquisition of Payapps and they were a great partner of yours. Just curious on what drove the decision to acquire them outright versus just extending the partnership? Thanks.

Yes. All right, so since you opened up the door there, let's talk a little bit about construction in general, because I think it's important to kind of highlight what's been going on there. We had a great EBA quarter for construction. Construction saw strong growth in our largest accounts, which is really important for the long-term health of construction. At a really high level, we also saw an increase in $100,000 deals and $1 million deals both in the US and internationally, and that's really important. And this is where one of the things where Payapps comes in, right? Remember, we're going end-to-end with our solutions here from design all the way to make. And we want to make sure that we get into the preconstruction planning and other types of our customers processes. It takes 83 days for our customers to process payments in their environment; that's just too long. Now, we're not getting into the transaction business. What we're doing is, we're getting into the business of helping them automate and track those payments across their entire life cycle so that they can get quicker returns, reduce that 83 days to be faster, and increase their cash flows. This has to be something we tightly integrate into our solution. So, we intend to tightly integrate this in just like we rebuilt some of the other solutions we acquired previously into what is today Autodesk Build, which is a new modern platform for doing some of these things. So we thought it was very important to own this so that we can integrate it. And then we went out there and we bought a premium asset. It's a leader. It's a global leader in payment processing. It's not a small company; it's not what we could afford, it's what we needed. And I think that's really important. So when we look forward at construction right now, we see tools like this being critical, as well as our preconstruction tools, and we see the deal cycles maybe getting a little longer, but we're competing head-to-head a lot more. I want to again highlight that Fortis deal out of Oregon, which was a head-to-head competitive deal with a pilot period that ended up going fully to Autodesk. So what we see right now in our business is building momentum driven by the end-to-end solution and acquisitions like Payapps as well. So, when we look forward into next year, we don't see deceleration of the business; we see acceleration.

Okay. No, that's very helpful. And then my quick follow-up for Debbie. Sorry if I missed it, but the 13% constant currency growth we did this year, did you mention how much was from the strong renewal cohort and then maybe any upfront revenues? I'm just trying to understand the several points of deceleration embedded in the 2025 guide? Thanks.

Yes. So the early renewal cohort didn't have any impact on revenue really; that had more of an impact on billings than it would have on revenue. And then the strength that we saw in enterprise represented about one point of growth.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Yes. Thanks for taking the question. Along similar lines of Jason's question on construction, Andrew. I'm just wondering if you could provide us an update on the go-to-market changes that you made, I believe last year and how you're expecting that business and you talked about acceleration, obviously make revenue is growing in the teens. Is this a business you think can be 20% over the medium term? Just help us frame what you're seeing both from the go-to-market and pipeline perspective? Thank you.

Yes. So, as you know, last year was the full year of integrating the sales force back into the mainline sales force. We went through some of the integration efforts to do that. There were obviously some slowdowns in the business related to integration of those things. Those things are past us now; the business is fully integrated. It's starting the year off, not only fully integrated from the get-go, but with all of the processes, plans, and capabilities all lined up according to how we want to grow the business heading into the year. One of the things I wanted you to notice in my previous commentary is that we're seeing deal activity going up. So, the pipeline is actually firming up really well, and we're in more deals, and some of these deals are more competitive, but we embrace that because when we're in competitive deals, that means we're showing up in places we weren't before. That's a really important part of this process. People are starting to ask themselves what solution they need for the next 10 years, 15 years versus what's available out there today. And the end-to-end capabilities we're delivering, especially leaning more heavily into our preconstruction capabilities, which lock in a lot of the cost and complexity and risk of a construction project, this is where we're leaning into this year, and this is where we're going to be driving the growth. So, I think we're past integration issues and moving forward into pure execution at scale inside the mainline salesforce. The EBA success is a great example of that.

That's helpful. And maybe a follow up for Debbie and apologies I've been jumping around calls, but can you just frame how you're thinking about the relative drivers of the top line growth outlook for FY 2025 between subs growth and pricing and the usual factors that build up to that? Thank you.

Sure. So, we typically are trying to target roughly a 50-50 split of growth coming from volume and price, with the partner margin being included in there as well. So, across volume and price, again, our target is to do roughly 50-50 in fiscal 2025; that would continue to be our goal. Now, there are certainly years where it's going to fluctuate between one or the other. We've talked about how this past year our new business was growing slower than we would anticipate in a more normal macroeconomic environment. As we look ahead, we're hoping to get that growth coming roughly equally across those two: volume and price. So that's how we're thinking about it.

Thanks, Debbie.

Yes. Thank you for the questions. So first, one of your competitors mentioned pressure on projected seat growth due to the declining ranks of engineers. Are you seeing a similar impact or is that not impacting your customers?

We are not seeing a decline in our growth rates because of any pressure associated with engineers. As a matter of fact, one of the important aspects is that we're moving into design and make processes; we have a pretty broad swath of people we can touch. Also, we continue to displace competitive products, especially with Fusion in the manufacturing space. So, we're not seeing that kind of effect of a declining base. We do see customers at times optimizing their installations with Autodesk to try to right size things, but not because they're downsizing their employment base.

Thank you for that. Then one for you, Debbie, and thank you for the clarity and moving pieces in 2025. In the press release, you mentioned that the guidance for growth in 2025. You said adjusting for FX, EBA acquisitions, transaction model you gave additional data points on the call, is the right way to think about it that guidance, constant currency ex-EBA transaction model and acquisitions is basically 9.5% to 11.5% growth rate in 2025, is that the right very basic math?

So what we talked about was a point of headwind from FX, a point of headwind from the absence of EBA true-ups, half a point of tailwind from acquisitions, and a point of tailwind from the new transaction model. So the net effect of that is half a point, so yes.

Great. Thank you very much.

Hey, guys. Congrats on a good quarter. What do you think is in the crystal ball to drive you to the low end of the range? Like what are you concerned about that you can see today? I assume that's part of the macro, but what within the macro would get you to the low end of the range?

We'll continue to watch that new business growth. That's something that we're laser-focused on, and if macroeconomic conditions were to shift, then that would be probably one of the first things that we'd be impacted and that can take us to the lower end of the range. We're watching end-market demand pretty closely, so that's why we talk about bid activity on BuildingConnected, and it continues to be at record highs. But of course, if that were to take a turn, that can impact us. And then we monitor these sentiments that we're hearing from our channel partners to understand how they're seeing end-market demand and what the impacts might be for our business. Those are the types of things that could inform whether or not we would be at the lower end of the range.

Okay and just to be clear, I thought it was when you went through some of the other moving parts on guidance that it netted out to kind of a point of tailwind. I guess you're throwing in the EBA true ups, or at least adjusting those out to get to an underlying rate. Is that part of the calculation there?

Yes. And sorry to go back to the last question because there's a lot of moving parts here, and it has been confusing. So for revenue in the guide, it's 1 point of headwind from FX, 1 point of headwind from the absence of EBA true-ups, 0.5 point of tailwind from the acquisitions, and 1 point of tailwind from the new transaction model, which is a net negative. So net 0.5 negative headwind as we look into the guide for fiscal 2025.

Okay. And then just one last quick one on the subscribers. I believe they're up 12 for the year if I have that number right. Your constant currency was 13; can you explain what you mean by half coming from volume and half coming from price? It seems like that's a lot more from volume; maybe there's some mix or something like that?

Yeah, there's definitely mix effects. And like I said, our target is to have it be roughly 50-50 between volume and price. But in any given year, we're going to have some puts and takes between that. But when we think about our guidance for fiscal 2025, we're targeting that 50-50 mix again.

Okay, great. Thanks a lot.

Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. I've got two if I may. Starting with you mentioned a lot of positive developments in the products like ACC BuildingConnect and the Fusion 360. I was wondering how we should think about that when it comes to your make revenue. And if we look at the growth rates in the make segment, it's been consistent around 17% on a constant currency for the past three quarters. Is there a possibility with all the positive developments that the make revenue will go back to growth rates in the 20s going forward? That was my first question. And the second question is on the new transaction model, please. I think Debbie, you mentioned that you're expecting one percentage point of growth tailwind from the new transaction, FY 2025, which will equate about $55 million, and then the slide deck you mentioned there's about $600 million of reseller commission in total. So the remaining $550 million or so, will that all come through in FY 2026, or will it take longer for all the contra revenue to flush through in your P&L? Thank you.

So a couple of things. So first, sorry, you were a little bit garbled and coming through, so we didn't quite get the first question, and we'll go ahead and try to take those in the callbacks. But when we think about the new transaction model and the $600 million, I think the most important thing to take away is that the $600 million is a good number to model with. As you think about how to model the business during the transition and the pace at which you'll see the new transaction model cost, that $600 million bleed into revenue and expense over time is really going to be dictated by the pace of the rollout. So, think of it as something that's going to be bleeding into revenue and expense over the next couple of years.

Right. I think at the previous quarter you mentioned it would take about two years to implement this new transaction model. So, presumably this total $600 million bleeding into revenue and cost will take longer than two years to complete in totality?

So the act of transitioning the invoicing will take approximately two years to complete. But remember that we recognize revenue over approximately one year. So it's going to be a little past that when the invoices at the higher amount bleed into revenue.

Right. Okay, understood. Thank you. My first question is around the make revenue. The growth rates have been consistent around 17% for the past three quarters. Should we expect that to go back to the 20% plus that we had in the past given the positive developments around the products like BuildingConnect or ACC or Fusion 360?

Our goal would be to drive greater growth from the make revenue line. That's going to be an important aspect of our ability to achieve our target 10% to 15% growth algorithm over time, and it's an area where we've been making incremental investments. So, we anticipate that, that revenue growth rate is going to be higher than the core business.

Thank you everyone for joining us. We look forward to seeing many of you on the road over the coming weeks and at our Q1 conference call later in the year. Thanks very much.